


Tree of Life Raft

by Nottherealdean



Series: Dean!clones [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood, Child Abuse, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Torture, Vomiting, dean!clones, puppet!deans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-28
Updated: 2014-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-26 21:24:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1703033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nottherealdean/pseuds/Nottherealdean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of the Dean!clones in Purgatory, and some of his heaps of trauma.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tree of Life Raft

**Author's Note:**

> Posted on tumblr on Apr. 14, 2014.

Dean chopped at the slender tree with his machete, sending little chips of pale wood flying until it started to creak and teeter. He gave the tree a push and leapt back as it started to lean. It fell with a woosh and a thump, springy branches bouncing from the shock, and he stood panting for a moment, then wiped his face clean of sweat and shifted his grip on the machete to begin hacking the limbs off. De-branch it, trim it, and he was one log closer to a raft. 

 

  
  
_The blood splattered on his face, his chest, hot at first but cooling fast. It was his blood, his own dying blood arcing out and splashing on his skin as the angel fought back and killed him. He saw himself die, smelled the blood thick in the air, heard flesh hit the ground. But he was also standing, blade in hand, his own body whole, healthy, as good as new, and suddenly he was no longer in Heaven, fighting with a dozen of his fellow doubles to kill Metatron. He was back in Hell. His body torn apart, twisted and hurt until there wasn’t anything else left for Alastair to touch, and then he was in a clean body ready to take its place and start all over, forever and ever and ever, always a shiny new body hot off the line and Alastair waiting with the keys and a smile._

  
  
Dean cut off the end of a branch with the saw-edged back of his machete, then started to dig out a peg hole in the log with his knife. The frame of the raft was ready, lying here on the grassy edge of the river bank. He had no rope, but pegging it together seemed to be working, and what was the worst that could happen? He’d have to swim to shore and try again. 

  
  
_He hadn’t been able to bear the sight of it, after that. Himself, himself, himself, spread out so he could see it all: the skin waiting to be cut and bruised and burned, the blood still in veins but ready to be spilled, the life to be snuffed out again and again and again. Seeing that long line of expectation stretching out ahead, each body a promise that more would be coming, he couldn’t take it, he couldn’t look— so he bolted off alone as soon as he could, first through Heaven and then through Purgatory._

  
  
Dean wondered how far it was to the sea. Surely Purgatory was big enough to have at least one ocean, but for all he knew he was smack dab in the middle of the biggest landmass around. It could take him months, and he might not be able to follow the same river all the way through. He hadn’t spent much time by the sea during his life, though, so— pain bit at his hand. The knife had slipped and skipped out of the peg hole and into the soft part of his left hand, between his thumb and forefinger. Blood welled up, running over skin and dripping down, staining the sharp glinting tip of the knife, a red smear shining bright and thick, burning on the blade in his hand.

_That’s my boy_ , said Alastair’s voice, and Dean was up and yards away clinging to the trunk of a tree, pressing his cheek against the smooth bark like he could merge into it, turn his flesh to wood and live between the roots down below him in the earth and the leaves up above, calm and quiet and bloodless.

He was shaking, his cheek felt hot and flushed and sweaty against the cool bark but he was cold deeper inside, in the core of his body, and he shivered in the dappled light of the sun shining through the leaves. He put his hand up to steady himself against the tree and the blood on it was dry, cracking and flaking off in jagged, sharp-edged chips. Dazedly startled, he looked at his other hand. It was still clenched tight around the hilt of the knife, his fingernails digging into the skin of his palm. He could hardly feel the weight of it but when he let it slip out of his hand and fall to the ground his hand was numb, like he couldn’t tell where his skin ended, almost the way his whole body felt after driving over too-rough roads or lying on a bed with the Magic Fingers on: vibrated, shaken loose of himself. Like when he’d first shot a gun and the recoil kicked his hand and numbed his wrist, and Dad had looked down at him so proud and—Dean was gasping, trying to stop it, trying to stop himself, but there was John’s voice,  _That’s my boy_ , and there was a crossbow in his arms and the silver-tipped bolt in the werewolf’s chest and he’d killed it, he’d killed something and made his dad proud.

He doubled over, dry heaving next to the tree, trying to hold himself together but knowing it was a lost cause. He was beat to hell, worn out and cracked and patched together on the fly, and at a certain point adding another layer of glue just keeps the broken edges farther apart, and pouring grease on the moving parts doesn’t stop them from grinding. You have to take care of that stuff, or it gets ruined, and he didn’t have any spare parts to replace the old ones.

He was tired and it hurt and he was shaking like he’d come apart, and there was no one else there so— he let himself. He let the bits of old wire snap and the duct tape peal up, and his knees buckled and he curled in on himself as he slumped to the ground.

Alastair and John, death and blood and pain and the means of producing it being put into his hands. Alastair with joy and pleasure in his heart and John with carelessness, with need, with desperation and love and obsession. It tore through him, and he didn’t think it would ever end but he didn’t think he could survive another second of it either. When the sobs eventually stopped shuddering out, he felt like a town after a storm’s been through, all emptiness and heaps of wreckage.

He lay in the grass exhausted, looking out over his own devastation but too stunned to make any sense of it. He was disconnected, parts of himself strewn out and the gaps between unfathomable. He couldn’t even see how the pieces used to fit into a whole, everything was too jumbled. Maybe that was the problem: he was car pieces and house rubble, instead of a person. 

Dean felt a spark of anger, flashing up bright and hard-edged. He was too tired to smother it the way he usually would, and it started to bloom, flaming up hotter and finding fuel everywhere among his disjointed parts. He wasn’t supposed to be a scrapyard— he wasn’t supposed to be useful pieces scattered among junk— he wasn’t supposed to be like  _this_. He was supposed to be a person. He wasn’t supposed to have been  _treated_  like this. 

The flames of his anger licked out amid the wreckage, racing into an inferno. Now there was another storm inside him, roaring and raging, but instead of enveloping him it held him aloft, like a bird hovering in air during strong winds. He could feel the heat of it, but he was above it, looking down and watching as  _he did the best he could_ burned. As  _you left part of yourself back in the pit;_  as  _let him rot in jail_ ; as  _that man got a bum rap around every turn_ ;  _not the man your daddy wanted you to be, huh, Dean?_ ;  _they’re supposed to make you miserable_ ;  _your own father didn’t care whether you lived or died_ ;  _I’m not too crazy about his new tone of yours_ ;  _all things considered_ ;  _you’re going to have to get creative to impress me_ ;  _I told you not to let him out of your sight_ ;  _Dad knew who you really were_ ;  _you got a lot to learn, boy_ ;  _I want you to watch out for Sammy_ ;  _your happiness for all those people’s lives, no contest_ ;  _I carved you into a new animal_ ;  _you’re not a person_ ;  _not that I blame him_ ;  _there is no going back_ ; they all charred and sizzled and then surged into flame, burning fiercely and violently. He watched it going up in smoke. It hurt: it was part of him— part of his life— burning, but it didn’t hurt as bad as what he’d just been through. The destruction was selective, not whole-sale, and it was of things that had gouged him as he held them, that he’d had to learn to live with and love around like a tree growing out over a loop of chain left wrapped around it. It hurt like cutting off restraints that had been pulled too tight. 

The heat of his anger warmed him, and thawed the chill out of his center and eased his exhaustion into tiredness, and as the flames inside him started to die down he began to notice the ground beneath him and the sun shining down. He felt like he could start to think again, and do more than  just survive the experience it as it rolled over him; he could take control and make a choice. 

Dean sat up, aching and stiff. The gash on his hand wasn’t very deep, and it had clotted over already. His raft frame was lying on the river bank like nothing had happened, like if he went over to it and started working again nothing  _would_  have happened and it would all be the same.

He stood, slowly, and walked to the water’s edge as if the earth was about to fall away under him at each step. He lowered himself to the ground and leaned out over the bank. The water was cool, crisp against his uninjured hand as he scooped it up. He began to wash away the blood, dabbing at it gingerly with wet fingers so the scab would stay intact and it could heal better. 


End file.
